


anagnorisis

by vounoura



Series: knife wife and staff loser [8]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Nirasa's an idiot but she knows so it's cool, Pining, Romance, but like good not-painful pining HJFSGFS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 17:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16223840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vounoura/pseuds/vounoura
Summary: (She loves Naryu so much, so much that it hurts.And, surprisingly, she’s alright with that.)





	anagnorisis

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuses for my utter lack of activity and slow ass update speed other than: I'm lazy and bad at writing
> 
> also Summerset destroyed me emotionally so

_‘How long,’_ she wonders, _‘have I loved you?’_

It’s a question that bubbles lazily through her mind - the room is dark, and given the lack of a window and the Clockwork City’s lack of a proper day-to-night cycle she’s not sure if it’s very late in the evening or very early in the morning. She’s sure it’s fuelled entirely by a general lack of sleep.

(Sleep doesn’t seem to come easily here, and not for the reasons that are usually familiar to her. The constant _click-click-click_ of gears in tune, steam escaping from pistons, metal tapping on metal - it’s worse than the nightmares, even if only because at least with the nightmares she’d be able to sleep for an hour or two.)

But it’s a persistent question, and maybe it’s only because she’s tired and homesick and lonely and a little bit of everything in between that she actually begins to consider it, a little.

 _‘How long have I loved you?’_ She asks herself, again, and she knows she doesn’t need to play dumb as to who ‘you’ is.

It disturbs her, almost, how much she misses Naryu - she’s not entirely sure exactly when she realized the gaping, empty feeling that seems to dog her wherever she goes isn’t another remnant of Coldharbour but a slightly different brand of homesickness, but now that there’s a face to the feeling it won’t leave her alone.

It’s almost annoying, the longing and the pining - what, is she twenty years old again? She’s over eighty now, for Three’s sake; she thought she got over this whole lovesick routine a long time ago.

(How old had she been, when this all started? Seventy-seven? How many birthdays has she missed, marred by war and blood?)

But the loneliness persists. It’s not for a lack of friendship - The Vanos twins and Neramo are here, though like her they won’t speak of Coldharbour (she’s thankful for that). She’s even found something of a friend in Varuni (Luciana less so; her other favourite pastime is bothering her with inane issues for no other reason than _why not_ ), and mostly spends her off time ghosting around her office - nothing better to do, usually.

But she knows it’s a different kind of loneliness - not the one torn into her by Molag Bal, nor one that could be filled by Raynor or Kireth or Varuni. It’s not her desire to leave this oil-stained place and go home, though that is a part of it.

She misses Naryu, absolutely and completely, and she knows it’s because she _loves_ the goddamned woman. She shouldn’t, but she’s gone and went and fallen in love with a Tong assassin and she’s sure her mother is screeching about it as she speaks. They had fallen asleep together in the same bed once or twice, and she misses waking up in the morning with her face buried in her neck.

She misses the sparring sessions they had started, after the whole Veya fiasco - Naryu had insisted on them, and she knows the true reasons behind them were as altruistic as they were selfish.

( _“I have nothing better to do, now that I have no apprentice,”_ is what she had said, but Naryu Virian is just as much, is not more, of a pathological liar as she is.

She still remembers the _look_ that had crossed Naryu’s face when Veya’s blade tore a hole through her side, when she had realized for the first time in a very long time, almost too late, that Nirasa was on the _losing_ end of a fight.)

She misses Naryu’s hair (fine-textured, cut short, somehow still messier than hers at all hours of the day), the sound of her voice. She misses rolling over in the mornings and being greeted by something other than a cold spot. She doesn’t know if it’s even possible to miss a _presence_ of all things, but she does.

(She even misses Naryu’s goddamn _cat_ , the one she had stolen off a street all the way back in Narsis.)

She even misses the leather-copper scent that Naryu seems to carry around with her everywhere she goes - not the oil and brass that permeates the Father of Mysteries’ realm, but oiled netch leather and the copper tang of blood.

(It shouldn’t be comforting - as familiar with the smell and taste of blood as she is - but it is.)

Really, she knows she’s being over-dramatic - Naryu’s only in Vvardenfell, and for all intents and purposes Nirasa’s only in Mournhold - but it's lonely. Provost Varuni is company enough, but sometimes she socializes like she solves calculations - all stiff and brass-like, like she’s never been allowed to be overly emotional.

(She supposes a life with only automatons to talk to would do that to a woman.)

She likes Varuni, really (thinks she’s pretty too, but that’s neither here nor there), but in the end she’s an academic woman with loftier goals than her own. She tries to tell herself it’s just the homesickness, but she knows she’s lying.

(She _is_ homesick, yes - half a decade away from her homeland, only to get called away again? She hates her job - but she knows she’s lying to herself and she’s sick of it. When it comes to her own _feelings_ she’s a pathological liar, she knows - but just once, maybe, she wants to try being honest.

...And also because her mother keeps poking questions at her, ever since Balmora. Her uncle doesn’t know the full story, of course - thank Vehk for that - but he must’ve relayed stories of _‘she’s running around with a woman I don’t know at all hours of the day’_ back to his dear sister and wow that did look kind of weird, didn’t it? Now that she thinks about it.)

She’s known she’s loved Naryu for a long time, perhaps longer than she thinks - They had kissed back in Kvatch, didn’t they? That feels like an era and a half ago, but she has returned the favour after Veya had left on a ship bound westward and that was that.

(She wonders how Veya’s doing, faintly - she had really liked the kid, even if life had dealt her a shit hand.)

Things had changed, after that - she had started spending less time at home, in Gnisis, and more in Balmora, and she knows her mother knows because she hears the whispering when people think she isn’t listening.

She knows she loves Naryu, enough so that it leaves something painful stuck in her throat; but still the words escape her. She doesn’t really _need_ them, does she? She’s probably incredibly obvious about it already, but still.

(It’s stupid to ask herself _but what if she doesn’t love me back_ , she knows, but the question creeps in regardless.

A mental image of Naryu calling her an idiot replaces it, and she laughs.)

She rolls over - if she didn’t have back issues before, she does now from these Vehk-damned beds - faces the other featureless wall, sighs. It’s almost like a prison; wall after wall of the same brass, the same people. The only alright thing about it all is that the weather is kept the same pleasant temperatures, day after day.

(She’s sure people could like it here - but she prefers the vivacity of _actual_ flesh-and-blood life.)

She thinks of Vvardenfell again, sighs more. She’s just wants to go _home_ \- she’s been saying that for years, but now she doesn’t know what _home_ is. Is she longing for Vvardenfell’s distant shores, for the mud and kwama-stink of Gnisis, her childhood home, or does she just want to be with Naryu? She doesn’t know. Suspects that it doesn’t really matter, anyway. They’re probably the same thing.

She just wants to go home, and try to spit out three little words between her teeth. She probably won’t get that far, but well at least she would’ve tried. She wants to roll over in bed, bury her face in a pillow, and catch that leather-and-blood smell that’s seems to be embedded into the fabric itself.

She wants to go home and, maybe for once in her life, drop that persistent title of _hero_. Let somebody else save the world - it’s taken so much from her already, hasn’t it? Let her have a break.

(But they won’t. No rest for the wicked, as they say.)

She wants to go home - but she can’t, she knows. She has a conscience that’s too giving, an inability to say no. She loves Naryu, almost too much, but she shoulders the responsibility of Nirn’s goddamn future almost entirely alone.

She wants to go home - and she will, one day. Home to Naryu, because as far as she’s concerned home is probably wherever Naryu happens to be. And perhaps that’s sappy and something twenty-year-old Nirasa Sethan would’ve come up with, but it is what it is.

And for what it’s worth - she knows, somewhere, home is probably waiting for her, complaining about how disgustingly sappy and cliche she is.

(She loves Naryu so much, so much that it hurts.

And, surprisingly, she’s alright with that.)

**Author's Note:**

> Anagnorisis: 'a moment in a plot or story, specifically a tragedy, wherein the main character either recognizes or identifies his/her true nature, recognizes the other character's true identity, discovers the true nature of his situation, or that of the others – leading to the resolution of the story.'
> 
> (This would've been a really good Summerset prompt but I'm not that cruel lmao)


End file.
